Post 4 - Genre as a Media Concept

The word 'genre' originally comes from the french and therefore meaning 'kind' or 'class'. The characteristic ingredients of a particular genre and the elements which make it recognisable can be defined as conventions. Conventions provide a common link between types of films and then becomes the visual elements that we expect when we go and see a film.

Repitition and difference has successfully created audience pleasure and cemented the bond between encoder (film-maker) and decoder (audience), like a contrast the film makers adhere to and we pay them by returning to the cinema. 

Genre theories


Christian Metz in Language and Cinema


He believed that there are four stages to the genre development theory:
- The experimental - Encircles generic codes and conventions of a thriller i.e. Scary Movie
- The classic - Structuring on narrative, mainly victorious i.e. Dracula [1931]
- The parody - Conventions have been deformised i.e. Shaun of the Dead [2004]
- The deconstruction - Generic essentials of thriller varied with current genres such as horror and thriller, where other genre elements and sub genres are introduced i.e. The Blair Witch Project

Emilie Atenloh


Emilie was a film historian and critic who often approached film form a sociological point of view. She was one of the first to realise the specific gender differences when relating to audience perception of films. Women preferred music and melodrama, male working class cinema goers preferred films which included blood and violence.

McQuail, Blummer and Brown 1972

Media provides a diversio, we create a personal relationship (feel part of a social group) create a personal identity (re-inforce our own values through compassion to stars in the media/film . Surveillance (we can see what's happening in the world).

The problems with genre theory 


Thomas Schatz states there are only two types of genre, order and integration. Films use the same structures with different paradigms so is it problematic to break down films into categories? Altman semantic elements hijack syntactic elements/ this is the same as the syntagmatic line with the paradigmatic sets (i.s. Lara Craft in Tomb Raider- The paradigmatic set would be vest, guns)
Altman's semantic is when the stories are the same but the costumes are different i.e. a cowboy fighting native american Indians and with the change of semantics its the same as spacemen fighting aliens therefore this suggests that semantic changes but syntactic stays the same.

Genre Themes


Metaphysical (meaning beyond science): 
Metaphysical themes are those ideas in society, which are general and abstract, ideas about life, the universe and everything. Science fiction could be said to use metaphysical themes because it deals with issues and abstract.

Social themes


Social issues such as sexuality, race, crime and drug addiction may be included in the horror or Sci-fi genre. Sci-fi films may deal with social issues such as showing a vision of a perfect society or a non-perfect society.


Ideological themes


As America has a massive influence on the cinema which is received in most countries it might be fair to ask what type of ideological themes are being conveyed by the movie makers. In Sci-fi films, the Americans are the ones who are shown to have the 'brains' and the characters with foreign accents (including English) are mostly represented as the 'evil characters'.



Review of genre from my AS opening sequence

For our opening sequence me and my group had chose to go for the genre 'comedy', this is because we wanted to amuse and entertain the audience and also after receiving the results from the questionnaire that we produced for our target audience, the majority of them preferred the genre comedy. The conventions we used for our opening sequence consists of the main character dressed 'geeky' wearing knee high cocks, huge glasses and going through a series of events to make the audience laugh, one of them being her having tissues trapped in her socks after using the toilets. We realised that it was quite hard when trying to add comical events into the opening sequence because we didn't want to the audience to feel sorry for the main character but instead find it funny and humorous.

Conclusion


After all the research and finding out more in depth detail about genre, I believe that it will help a lot when producing our short film as a group, and know what characteristics, background, props and mise-en-scene fit altogether to suit the genre.


A paradigm is a set of associated signifiers.   
Genre employs a paradigmatic sets for action and adventure for example in the film 'tomb raider' there are signs such as a hand gun, machine gun, vest top and boots which are easily read by the audience.

My understanding of what genre means:


The following codes are the characteristics of a particular genre which can be defined as conventions:

Technical codes – camera, lighting techniques, sound
Enigma codes – A sense of mystery that intrigues the audience

Narrative codes – the shape and structure of a story
Action codes – action that makes us realize where we are in the narrative and that the story is developing
Written codes – captions, anchorage
Character codes – similar to symbolic codes, including costume, make up of a particular character
Symbolic codes – body language, use of colour, mise-en-scene

Review of genre from my AS opening sequence

For our opening sequence me and my group had chose to go for the genre 'comedy', this is because we wanted to amuse and entertain the audience and also after receiving the results from the questionnaire that we produced for our target audience, the majority of them preferred the genre comedy. The conventions we used for our opening sequence consists of the main character dressed 'geeky' wearing knee high cocks, huge glasses and going through a series of events to make the audience laugh, one of them being her having tissues trapped in her socks after using the toilets. We realised that it was quite hard when trying to add comical events into the opening sequence because we didn't want to the audience to feel sorry for the main character but instead find it funny and humorous.

Conclusion


After all the research and finding out more in depth detail about genre, I believe that it will help a lot when producing our short film as a group, and know what characteristics, background, props and mise-en-scene fit altogether to suit the genre.

Post 3 - Skills Table

The ‘Skills Table’ allow us to see what we as a group have developed over the past 2 years in this course; it illustrates what new skills we have achieved and what further skills we need to improve during our short film.

My own personnel SMART targets which I would like to achieve are as follows:

SMART:         Specific           Measurable      Achievable      Realistic/Relevant       Time Bound

My first target is to make some independent research for the post production process, this is will help to know which genre will suit best for our project and what further details we could add when filming and to make sure which type of films do audience like best.

My second target it to make sure we as a group, have a better communication when it comes to filming and organising the filming schedule, this I believe is very important because sometimes it can get delayed due to poor communication and therefore re-scheduling for another day, which therefore may result in rushing to get the whole filming finished and seeming very unprofessional.

My third target I want to make sure that I am up to date with all my coursework tasks so that I do not fall behind, I believe that this is also very important and a lot of spare time is needed when doing this as when it comes to theory work it may take up a lot of time. So I need to make sure that I update my coursework every so often.

My fourth target is to make sure that I improve my ICT skills when in the edit suite, to do this I will need to practice at home editing videos as I have the editing software at home, this will therefore help me when it comes to editing the actual short film.

My fifth and final target is to try and influence others, negotiating and balancing diverse views to reach workable solutions. This will also help the group to have equal priorities and job roles when filming.

Post 2 - "Creativity"

Define "Creativity"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity
Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new (a product, a solution, a work of art etc.) that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs. What counts as "valuable" is similarly defined in a variety of ways.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/creativity
1. The state or quality of being creative.

2. The ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination: the need for creativity in modern industry; creativity in the performing arts.

3. The process by which one utilizes creative ability: Extensive reading stimulated his creativity.

Class work from our game of consequences:
As a class we played a game called the 'game of consequences' we realized that we played it wrong first time round producing the creative sentence 'Amber Zoe and David Beckham met at Aqua Splash, He said "Hiya" she said "I have a chicken farm" and the consequences were, they went on a boating trip together and had a lovely trout supper'. However we played the same game again and changed it a little bit by adding nouns, verbs and adjectives to make it more creative, here is an example of what we had done:

Creativity Task Video:

The Consequences Game

As a class we all played the 'consequences game', to do this we had a piece of paper each and had to write the word 'the' and an adjective, we folded the paper over and passed it over to the next paper and they had to do the same again however this time using a noun, same again but using verb, then 'the' and adjective and lastly finishing it off with another noun. After we finished the game we were all left with the paper we started of with first and received an creative certain each to which we had to produce a picture out of the sentence, so this was my sentence I had recieved:

'The yellow rubber swims the purple plum'

Independent Study:

We were all set a task to produce an individual creative piece for our work so for my independent part of being creative I decided to produce a collage of 'me', and showing how it is being a 'Muslim', I did this by putting lots of images together with my family and my cultural beliefs:

Post 1 - Define the term "Skills"

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/skill

1. The ability, coming from ones knowledge, practice, aptitude, etc, to do something well: Carpentry was one of his many skills.

2. Competent excellence in performance; expertness; dexterity: The dancers performed with skill.

3. A craft, trade, or job requiring manual dexterity or special training in which a person has competence and experience: the skill of cabinetmaking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skill

A skill is the learned capacity to carry out pre-determined results often with the minimum outlay of time, energy, or both. Skills can often be divided into domain-general and domain-specific skills. For example, in the domain of work, some general skills would include time management, teamwork and leadership, self motivation and others, whereas domain-specific skills would be useful only for a certain job. Skill usually requires certain environmental stimuli and situations to assess the level of skill being shown and used.

My own definition of "Skills"
My own understanding of the term "skills" is meant to do something well and resulting in achieving a certain goal, skills can be part of anything for example, in terms of school work, one of the required skills needed in this would be to have good listening skills in order to understand the topic/subject.
Some skills in relation to media productions:
- Communication skills
- Group work skills
- Technical Skills- Using edit suites and camera
- Production skills
- ICT skills e.g. Knowing how to use different types of software's including finding resources and information on Internet, using Microsoft word, PowerPoint etc.